


The Amazing Life of Ants

by KoombiyoFan



Category: Koombiyo, කූඹියෝ | Koombiyo (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-01-23 07:10:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12501764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KoombiyoFan/pseuds/KoombiyoFan
Summary: When Jehan meets Priyantha, something sparks in the heart he has guarded for so long.





	1. The Truth Your Eyes Speak

The girl waved to him as she got off the bus. She hardly looked like the type of girl to frequent public transport but there she had been, sitting next to him and actually talking to him. Jehan hated how good it felt to be acknowledged by her. She smiled at him but it was all rubber and plastic. She was simply being polite, trying to give someone whom she assumed was a foreigner a positive view of the country racing outside the window; anything to let him know it wasn't just the heaps of rubbish piled on the sidewalks and the homeless with the hollow, hungry look in their eyes.

Priyantha's smile was completely different. There was something so pure about it. Jehan didn't have to strain to read the man's mind. It was all there, out in the open for everyone to see. Priyantha wasn't a particularly handsome man (but then again, neither was he, Jehan had to admit), but when the man smiled at him with a glint of teeth and eyes like open doors, Jehan's heart lurched.

"Come home with me." he wanted to say. "Come with me," was what came out. Priyantha followed him as his eyes said he would. Followed him like a lamb to slaughter.

"I like your smile," Jehan managed with some difficulty. It was easier to love a beautiful woman. For him, the act of loving a woman was always more a show orchestrated for the benefit of society, and one needed the approval of society in his business. "That's all I like," he lied easily. The lie came to him easily and even though it was an innocent one, he suddenly felt ashamed as those dark eyes looked directly into his with nothing to hide.

As they sat companionably in the old dilapidated warehouse he called home, a fact that ensured he could bring no women home, Priyantha didn't move his eyes to the cobwebbed ceiling or the grimy floors. Instead, they were fixed on him as he spoke. He called him sir. He felt none of the thrill he felt when people addressed him so. He was not above this man. If anything, Priyantha was far above him in every way that truly mattered.

When Priyantha changed out of what Jehan assumed was his best set of clothes (the man had been going for an interview when he met him, after all), he tried not to stare. There was nothing even remotely splendid about the man's body. There was none of the magnificence of the steroid-fueled gym rats who frequented the tuk tuk parks. It was not the hardened body of a day laborer. It was simply an ordinary figure covered by the layer of pudge a driver accumulated sitting at the wheel day in and day out. Still, it surprised Jehan how erotic he found it.

_I like your smile. Come home with me. Come live with me._

“I’ve been looking for a man like you,” he whispered to himself as the last light of the lamp flickered into darkness.


	2. Through the Looking Glass

Jehan would never have thought in his wildest dreams that he would find a man as ordinary as Priyantha attractive, but it was everything mad made Priyantha ordinary that made him _extraordinary_.

What Jehan saw in front of him was a man with the fashion sense of someone who dressed out of necessity, barely looked in the mirror one a day, and had a bad case of neckbeard. Jehan looked at Priyantha in his black polo t-shirt and the pair of cheap sunglasses he'd given him, and he couldn't help but marvel at how presentable the man looked. Handsome even. Priyantha looked him in the eye in a way he still found difficult to adjust to. "Pretty, eh?" he said lightly with a smile. Pretty was closer to the truth than handsome. Priyantha's mop of curly hair after a bath and his incredibly long eyelashes didn't fit in the category of beauty attributed to men. It was more delicate and feminine, even though the man was anything but when taken as a whole.

When Priyantha mounted the motorbike and set off to make his first round of deliveries, Jehan stood at the door feeling like a lonely wife watching her husband leave for work, knowing fully well that the next eight hours would be spent in solitude. 

_But he'll always come back. He said he would, and my man never lies._


	3. The Games Men Play

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The games they played weren’t for children; not for men who couldn’t think on their feet. And if Priyantha couldn’t think, Jehan would gladly think for him.

When Priyantha dug into his plate of rice, he looked less than happy with the modest fare. The dried fish, boiled potatoes with just a dash of coconut milk and the coarse rice was the food of paupers but Jehan wasn’t used to eating anything better so he didn’t mind it. Priyantha wrinkled his nose at the food. He was probably used to a heaped plate served in the kitchen of the men whose expensive vehicles he drove, Jehan thought as he sucked the salt off the fish bone. 

Jehan often found himself waking up to Priyantha’s voice belting out off key tunes as he bathed, washed the dishes, or their clothes. The cold water that flowed from the rusty taps in the morning always seemed to put him in a good mood.

***

When the cop drew the gun on Priyantha when he moved to take his phone from his pants pocket, Jehan’s body moved instinctively. He could feel the blood thrumming in his ears as he starfished his arms and tried to calm the man with the gun. When the policeman continued to wave the pistol about, Jehan dropped to his knees, his feet suddenly unable to bear his weight. The gesture of submission seemed to appease the cop as he quickly explained that the timid man cowering behind him wasn’t armed. Priyantha’s pleas and admonitions shook him to the core but he had to be level headed. The games he played weren’t for children; not for men who couldn’t think on their feet. And if Priyantha couldn’t think, Jehan would gladly think for him.


	4. A Third Wheel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Priyantha's used to having Jehan all to himself and he doesn't want to share.

Priyantha's used to having Jehan all to himself and he doesn't want to share. When the woman who called the cops turned out to be an old university friend of Jehan’s, Priyantha was glad that he wouldn’t end up in jail. God knew what his family back home would do if they found out that their golden boy was a criminal. However, he didn’t expect to feel quite so irked by the woman’s presence.

Anjana, Jehan had called her. She drove the kind of vehicle he had sat behind the wheel of but never could dream of owning. Her true smile hid behind the oversized shades she wore, and Priyantha sat in the back seat listening to the pair catch up.   
There was nothing Priyantha could contribute to the conversation so he fell silent. He left them to their idle chatter and walked home when he got the chance. He would sit at their old wooden table and wait for Jehan to come back so he would finally be his alone.

***

The beer they drank went straight to Priyantha’s head.

A driving job meant that he had to be sober at all times and it was only on very rare occasions that Priyantha drank. Losing one’s livelihood, being tricked and made a criminal, these were all very good reasons for downing a bottle of beer. 

Hearing the story of Jehan’s past drop from his lips like salt made Priyantha’s heart ache. When Jehan finally asked him whether he would like to leave and live as the honest man he was, Priyantha shook his head in bewilderment. He knew where his place was and it was at the side of the man who had never told him exactly what his place was. Where Jehan was, Priyantha was home.

As the song played on the old radio, they danced a dance of sorrow and liquor. Priyantha stared at the man swaying before him until he saw him anew.


	5. Unspoken Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Priyantha sees Jehan in a different light.

Their existence was peaceful and idyllic. Priyantha’s heart threatened to beat out of it’s chest when it was just the two of them, out on the streets acting like teenagers. There were other feelings too, ones Priyantha could not understand, like when he leaned against Jehan as they crank called people on public phones, feeding the machine the last of their coins r when he retrieved a drunk and fully clothes Jehan from the shower and stripped the sopping clothes off him before he could catch a cold.  
But they were grown men and Priyantha had always assumed that one grew out of such things.

***

Positive thinking was something Priyantha had believed in his whole life, although he hadn’t really thought about it in the way Jehan had seemed to. After all, Jehan was a college boy and Priyantha had barely made it through school. Listening to Jehan speak, his otherwise even voice suddenly changing pitch ad jumping excitedly, Priyantha felt as if he could conquer the world. He tried to forget that Jehan was a conman at heart and everything he was spouting was probably rubbish to fuel his next scam but he just couldn’t help it. The man in front of him was suddenly so much more than an unemployed graduate who lived on the thrill of uncertainty. Priyantha tried to ignore the swelling feeling in his chest as he listened to Jehan speak.

**Author's Note:**

> With the final episodes of Koombiyo about to air, I'm going to try to finish as many chapters as I can! Comments and Kudos are lovingly drooled on :)


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